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NJ voters want someone else to pay their budget bills: Editorial

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Raising New Jersey's gas tax to address repairs for poor roads and bridges would cost the average driver just $20 to $40 a year -- compared with the average auto repair bills of $600 annual that result from lousy road conditions.
(Patti Sapone/The Star-Ledger)

New Jersey voters are jerks. The new state motto: “Screw you, not me.”

That’s the impression that’s left by Thursday’s Quinnipiac University poll, which showed that Garden State voters prefer that someone else shoulder the load of the state’s burgeoning budget crisis.

We’re aware of the hole we’re in, the poll shows, with 87 percent acknowledging the state’s serious budget problems. But when it comes to solutions, we’d like state employees to bear the pain, thank you.

New Jersey’s gas tax is second-lowest in the country, and the Transportation Trust Fund, which it’s supposed to fill, is broke. Nevertheless, 65 percent of voters say ‘no’ to raising the gas tax. That’s a 2-to-1 margin.

How should we fill the budget gaps?

Freeze state workers’ wages? 53 percent say yes.

Reduce pension benefits for new state workers? 55 percent yes.

Mercifully, 57 percent of voters say we shouldn’t lay off state workers (38 percent say ‘yes’), but then 57 percent say we should cut government services before raising taxes. And that generally means laying off the people who provide those services.

We’ll cut the folks responding to the Quinnipiac poll a break – they’ve been goaded in this direction. Despite widespread reforms to state workers’ pay and benefits during the past four years, not to mention budget cuts that led to historic layoffs of police, teachers and firefighters, Gov. Chris Christie used his annual budget address to continue to blame state worker compensation for our fiscal aches and pains.

Christie isn’t wrong. Decades of mismanagement by New Jersey governors and legislators who awarded unsustainable pay and retirement packages to state employees in return for union support helped get us into today’s predicament. But there’s only so much that today’s state workers can do to solve past problems.

New Jersey’s out of cash – especially for expenses like transportation and the environment. At some point, taxpayers will have to assume those costs. And a gas tax increase spreads the pain among those who use our roads and bridges – including high percentages of out-of-state drivers who buy fuel in New Jersey.